We now turn in God's Word this week in this series, Gospel GPS, The Pathway for Spiritual Formation, in this third sermon as we are, we've been looking out for the last couple of weeks, what is spiritual maturity? And so now what we're gonna do is we're making a slight pivot, okay? So if spiritual maturity is having a greater understanding of the depth and power of the gospel, not just to solve my need for forgiveness, but rather to deeply change our character and who we are. You remember, as I said last week, that one of the things that is a reality for how we live is we often see the Bible as the place that maybe feeds us intellectually. Maybe it expands our understanding of who God is. It can also deepen and inflame very good convictions, but it is very possible to attend to God's Word only hoping that it will strengthen our intellect and expand our convictions, but hopefully it might not have to get into the whole character thing. But what we find out is that the power of the gospel never wants to merely make us mentally or intellectually stronger and leave our character unchanged, nor to expand our convictions. Because you can have the first two and still not know the power of the gospel. So now what we're doing is we're turning from what does it mean to work towards spiritual maturity and trying to understand then what are often the obstacles for us growing in maturity in Christ. And so we're going to enter it this week by looking at a familiar passage from the letter to the Hebrews, which we've preached through in a series on the Hebrews, but we're gonna be looking at these four verses and the concern that the pastor had for his congregation. And it is, I hopefully, I would hope that it serves for us as an invitation to engage God and to engage ourselves in much deeper and more robust ways. So before you turn there, and as preparation for this, I want to make you aware that the letter to the Hebrews and the sermon that he preaches is very similar to the letter that Paul writes to all the churches, and we've been in Colossians. It's the same in Ephesians, same in Philippians. If you go back and look at them, he makes great declarations and beautiful portraits of who Christ is and his person and what he's done. He then says, in some way, shape, or form, so therefore, As a result of or because of the foundation who is Christ, what are we called to do? The writer to the Hebrews does the same thing. He spends the first chapter declaring the glories and radiance and power of who Jesus is. And then he begins chapter two with these words. Hear now God's word. Therefore, We must pay much closer attention to what we have heard, lest we drift away from it. For since the message declared by angels proved to be reliable and every transgression or disobedience received a just retribution, how shall we escape if we neglect such a great salvation? It was declared at first by the Lord. It was attested to us by those who heard. While God also bore witness by signs and wonders and various miracles and by gifts of the Holy Spirit distributed according to His will. This is the word of the Lord. Thanks be to God. Pray with me. Lord, now as we have responded to your gracious offering and provision for us materially and physically, we now turn to you and ask that you would provide for us and our whole being, living and walking in what it means to be a disciple of Christ. What does it mean to find deeper formation in the gospel? Father, we need you to teach us. And we pray you would do that through your attested word, which are witnesses to your glory, what we need to know to grow into maturity. Even as it warns us, oh Lord, may your spirit testify with our spirit. May you lead us to deeper places of dependence on Jesus Christ. Help us, oh Lord. Help the teacher. In Jesus' name, amen. So the pastor, the preacher to the Hebrews, main concern for the body of Christ to whom he was writing was a theme which he returns to over and over again, and which is also attested by other writers in the New Testament. And that is the problem of dullness. And so in some sense, he's saying to the congregation, if this is who Christ is, why so dull? Why so dull? And so he gives them a warning, and he warns them against two things, both of them we woven together in this passage. First, he wants to make them aware of drifting. neglecting, and then I believe inferred in all of it, in that very word, therefore, is a minding. Drifting, neglecting, minding. So let's look together at this idea that the preacher is leading us to. This idea of drifting, he says here in these opening words, he says, pay close attention to what you have heard lest you drift away from it. So he's calling them back to truths which he's just spent the first portion of his sermon establishing. And it might seem as elementary, it might seem as beginning theology 101. that Jesus is the Son of God through whom God has made his radiance glory known. And that it is Christ who gave of his body and blood that we might be redeemed. And so it seems like, oh, well, okay, but see, that's the issue. The issue is, his concern is that we somehow think that those elementary truths are truths that are meant for back there when one proclaimed faith in Jesus Christ. But then as we continue to lead on, how do we appropriate the deeper truths of what it means to say that Christ is the radiant glory of who God is? And so his concern is for them, be careful that you do not drift away from these important truths which have been established for you. And so he uses this word drifting as a nautical term that we need to understand in two ways. First, now drifting can happen because perhaps you lose power or some current comes on you and you begin to drift off your intended course. where something outside of us blows us off the direction that we were intended to go. But another way that we begin to drift is not because something is acting upon us, but because of something that is acting from within us, or something we have failed to pay attention to. And so, we begin to drift off course, thinking it not so important, or thinking, well, it's just, I'm not really off course, you know, it's just life, you see. And we try to apply rationality to that. You know, well, we use things like, life is so busy right now, my life is so full, I just simply don't have time to pay attention to what's going on inside my heart. You see, our outward actions are not disconnected from what's going on inside of us. We are complex beings. We have thoughts, we have feelings, and from those feelings come desires, and from those desires, we make choices. And if we're honest, sometimes, frankly, we get tired and we're not that interested or we get bored with asking the harder questions of what the radiant glory of Christ and His power and His salvation has to say about my deeper interior self. And we begin to drift. It happens a lot like this. Paul and Rachel Chandler, almost 11 years ago to the day, it was actually October 23rd, 2009. A British couple, retired, sold everything they had. They had a boat, they fixed it up. They went to the Seychelles, I think it's called, islands. It's about 115 islands, roughly. I know somebody's gonna correct me on how I pronounce that. That's okay, it's a beautiful place, apparently, in pictures, I've seen them. So 90 to roughly 100 or so islands outside, pretty far off the coast of Madagascar. So we're in the, you know, Indian Ocean. And so this is a cool place to go if you're able. Let's put it that way. So here they are on their sailboat. They're going around and you're discovering they're going to different places that they wanna go. And so they take four hour watches. And this happened to be the watch that Rachel, it was her job. Her husband Paul was down below resting and she was up on deck and about 2.30 in the morning and there was no breeze, very little breeze at all. So there was really not much current, but she needed to keep moving. And so she turned on the motor and the motor just, you know, just kind of puttering along and just trying to get where they're going. The challenge is, is what was happened not while they were there, but before they ever left. You see, her husband happened to be a very, very bright man, not just a good sailor, but a very bright man. In fact, he was a Cambridge educated engineer. As the article in the New York Times in 2009 said, he tended to view the world in a hyper-rational way. And he considered the risks of being hijacked to be the equivalent to slamming into a partly submerged shipping container in the middle of the ocean. Meaning, theoretically possible, but very unlikely. Technically, he was right, the author says. A few dozen ships were hijacked each year around that time out of the tens of thousands that sailed past Somalia, putting the odds of their being captured at about 0.1%. And the Seychelles, a sumptuous vacation spot, were pretty safe at the time, though unbeknownst to them, pirates had begun to discover it. So at 2.30 on October 23rd and the little motor running, what it failed to do is it failed to alert her because of the noise on the water from what was approaching. And as you might imagine, they were hijacked, taken ashore, and then taken deep into Somalia and were held captive for 388 days. And what it begins to display is this, we can have all the rational thoughts that we want, but we may not realize those percentages may seem a little less risky until you find yourself right in the middle of it. Till you find yourself in a sea full of challenges and problems or shark filled waters or pirates. What seemed like just a little drifting, seemed like okay. And the next thing you know, you're being held captive. This is the concern of the preacher to the Hebrews. And here's the issue. Drifting happens not as a result of doing nothing. Oftentimes, drifting spiritually can happen even when we're extremely busy. Believe it or not, the old English word from which we get the word sloth tends to our ears translate to a person who's just lazy, not doing anything, sitting on the couch, eating potato chips, watching Netflix. But sloth has a whole much broader understanding, which Dorothy Sayers said this way when writing about sloth, Catholic writer, she says, that one of its favorite tricks, sloth will dissemble itself under the cover of a whiffling activity of the body. Meaning we can be extremely busy We can be paying attention to all kinds of things, yet we become slothful or lazy in the things that matter most. The tyranny of the urgent begins to drown out the imperative of the important. The tyranny of the urgent drowns out the imperative of the important. And slowly but surely, we begin to say, I'm too busy, I'm slammed, too much family, too much work, too much life. But actually, in the midst of our busyness, we become slothful and we begin to drift from the truths which actually ground us and we begin to attend our hearts, our desires, our emotions, our choices, our lives to rival truths. The truths of trying to reach ambition, or success, or the to-do lists, or the relationships, or trying to find meaning in relationships, which cannot bear the weight in which we put on them, but only in Christ alone, the truth can actually give us the grounding which we need. Life has been so busy, I'm so full, I haven't given much thought to what's going on internally. And slowly but surely, that which really operates beneath us is not rationality. We like to think of ourselves as first and foremost thinking things, but we're first and foremost loving things, James K.A. Smith says. And if we fail to attend to what our desires are, what our emotions are, those are the things which begin to shape our choices. And we begin to drift and listen to rival truths. This is the concern for the preacher. It is my concern for us. It is my concern for myself. Are you attending to what's going on beneath? And here's the problem with modern church. Let's just get real. Oftentimes, some of the most dangerous waters that a Christian can be in is in the church. because we've set up life where it feels, the waters feel just warm enough, where we know people aren't really going to ask, no, no, no, how are you really doing? What is really going on? And so we begin to live a divided life. We begin to say, I'm fine. So we have this little, the tip of the iceberg. We have the part of the iceberg we want everybody to see. We post it, we share it, we show it. But what oftentimes is going on is the part that nobody else sees, but we know is there, but we're too busy to attend to it because frankly, when we're honest, it's too messy and too uncomfortable to really address. And here's how it shows itself, just as an example. You might have somebody in your life maybe even in this room, or in your relationship pool, that you're angry with, you know you've gotta have a conversation. Or maybe there's a whole group of people you're angry with. But what you do is you push that down because attending to that problem is messy, uncomfortable, and hard, and you might get rejected. So what we do is we play the dual life game. On the outside, I'm fine. But on the inside, you've got this low-grade chronic anger just beneath the surface that if left unattended will break. and we are actually already in captivity if we're leading a dual life in that way. And I will tell you, as a pastor, as a pastor to other pastors, we play that game. And I also know congregations do the same. How are you drifting? How might you be allowing what's underneath the surface to go unaddressed? But above the surface, everything's fine. Is it really? Let us not drift from the truth of what Christ came to do. And here is what leads to drifting, and it's the second point, it's neglecting. Because really, at the root system of where drifting happens, it's neglecting. And here's what I mean. Drifting comes from neglect because there is a deeper power of the gospel of Jesus Christ that is meant and intended to heal our whole selves and not just our choices or our active sin problems. Meaning, we like to reduce the idea of sin far below what the Bible actually understands it to be. Bible understands, and our Christian tradition, our Christian faith teaches that sin is a whole complex reality of our very natures, of our living, of our being, of the world, and yet we've reduced sin to choices of things we were supposed to do but don't do, and things we don't do that we should do, and we like to make it an issue of choices, of moral ethics, and it certainly is that. But sin is so much bigger than merely those things are moral choices. In fact, Calvin would say, the knowledge of God and that of ourselves are connected without knowledge of self. Sorry, the knowledge of God and that of ourselves are connected. Without knowledge of self, there is no knowledge of God. Without knowledge of God, there is no knowledge of self. This is why he said this, because sin is the word Christians use to name not simply our failed acts, but also our inner and outer captivity. If we embrace a fuller understanding of the nature of sin, knowledge of self extends beyond our obvious actions of transgression or our insufficiency to save ourselves. Do you know that the gospel is so much more than that? Our need for forgiveness and our inability to save ourselves? In fact, the reality of sin helps us actually to see just how big the gospel is, that it extends to every limit and failure of our lives, and it is our whole lives, not just our actions. As one writer said, God in Christ takes our sin that we may live forgiven, free, and whole. Do you see? Forgiven, free, and whole, not just forgiven. And if we neglect this truth, that the gospel and its power and the power of Christ extends to the whole of life. and we neglect it, then what we end up doing is we become captives, right back to the practice of sin, and this is the very thing that the writer of Hebrews is trying to warn us against, because he says, for since the message declared by the angels proved to be reliable, and every transgression or disobedience received its just retribution, how shall we escape if we neglect such a great salvation? We have such a great salvation that it means to go way deep to the crevices that are frankly uncomfortable and hard to look at. And if we don't know where we need the gospel because we're not reflecting on it, we're not thinking about it, we're not asking the questions, then we're actually neglecting the knowledge of God and his great salvation. to attend to the knowledge of God, and to attend to the knowledge of self, is to ask you, oh Lord, by your power and by the gospel, come in, save me from how I try to neglect the power that you bring at much, much deeper levels. The challenge is for us, that much of modern life does not reward us for going deeper. And here I'm not talking about therapeutic psychology as somehow we like to think of it that way, or just navel-gazing, or over-importance on my emotions. That's not what I mean. It means to actually begin to ask questions about what's going on beneath the surface. of our lives, of asking the questions that say, Lord, is there a place in my life, in relationships, or in my walk with you that I'm actually running from you? Or that I may be using even good things like fellowship or relationships to avoid you. or I'll attend to the scriptures, but I don't wanna go deeper to ask, where do I need to be healed? It's very easy, even within the church, to use God to run from God. And when we begin to neglect what the writer of Hebrews says here when he declares, speaking of Christ, he is the radiance of the glory of God and the exact imprint of his nature, and he upholds the universe by the word of his power. After making purification for sins, he sat down at the right hand of the majesty on high, having become as much superior to angels as the name that he has inherited is more excellent than theirs. to hear those words is to give ourselves to the greatest power full of love and mercy and kindness who himself says he's gentle and lowly in heart, who invites us to come to this place. And here's the reality, when we begin to neglect what's going on underneath, I think we become very weary. We lack the energy and strength of the Holy Spirit to face everyday life, and when we lack the energy spiritually, we begin to look for the strength in other things, materially, relationally, circumstantially, to help us fix what hurts. But what is called for is a deeper asking, Lord, how can you help me see what you are teaching me? which requires reflection. As Rich Viotas says in his book, The Deeply Formed Life, limited reflection usually leads to dangerous reaction. When there's no space to process our inner worlds, we find ourselves mindlessly and instinctually reacting to the world around us. Have you ever done that? I mean, I've done this. I've done this in the last couple of weeks where I found myself, I don't need to get into details, but I remember calling PD and I said, oh man, I am so mad about something. I mean, I was worked up. And I was like, talk me off the ledge, man. Talk me off the ledge. And I hung up. So I was like, so when I got to see him, I was like, all right, help me out. So the point is, what was going on inside of me? Why did that elicit what I was experiencing? Why did that elicit such emotion? Now, thankfully, I had a brother in Christ who I could call and say, talk me off the ledge, help me process this, because I will tell you, I am a good enough a people person to show you all the good stuff while on the inside to hide all the stuff I'm really angry about. But I also know this is the more I do that, the more likely I am to give a reaction to one of you that could bring hurt. Do you experience that? You experience that with your children? You experience that with your spouse, a neighbor, a friend? What does the gospel have to say? So here's what I want to do this morning. I want to end this sermon with the third point of minding. I wanna do something a little different. I wanna combine it with the Lord's Supper. So my third point is about the Lord's Supper. So here's what I wanna do. So as we think about what we're about to do here is we're about to do something which the Lord Jesus invites us to do mindfully and aware of what's happening. You see, when we come to this supper, when we come to this place, we're coming to get some food and drink, and just as he said to his disciples, he intended it to be an invitation to rest, in him because the meal pointed to who he was and what he does. And so he's inviting us to find rest. And he's inviting us to find rest from our weariness. And that weariness is not meant to be something that we just live in, but we need the Lord to renew us, to strengthen us. And so we come back to this place and the way we can mindfully do so is saying, where am I trying to find strength for today? Where do I find a place where I can understand what's really going on underneath the surface, but find healing and safety and peace and rest? It is in Jesus Christ alone. And so this table is not the table of Columbia Presbyterian Church, it's the table of the Lord's. And he invites us to come back to this place to see what he has done, but to do so with our whole self. So here's what I mean by minding. So as you come to the table this morning, and I'm actually grateful that during the pandemic, we're now getting up and we're walking forward. I know you may not be crazy about walking, but it's something we're choosing to do. And we're coming to the table and we're taking something that's being offered and we're going back. So as you do so this morning, I want you to do so by considering four questions. First, what are you mad about? What are you sad about? What are you anxious about? What are you glad about? Now, maybe only one of those questions applies to you. Maybe all of them do. Maybe a couple do. But here's what I wanna say to this congregation. If you're visiting with us, this is kinda how I speak to congregations, so here's the deal. CPC, this is not a performance. Do not think that you need to check off the box and dress up your clothes and get it all right before you come to the table because that is not the gospel. Coming to the table doesn't mean you wipe off your stink before you come. This is made for stinky people. This is not made for the well-dressed, well-educated, got-it-all-together crowd. This is meant to be a messy place because the one who has healing in his wings invites us, which means your whole self. And so I'm asking you again, what are you mad, sad, glad, what's my fourth one? Yeah, anxious about? And whatever that answer is, when you come to the table, bring it with you. That the Holy Spirit might reveal that to you and know that when you take and eat, you can give that thing to him. Because he's giving you something and it can be in exchange. But what he gives you is far greater. For Jesus says, come unto me all who are weary and heavy laden and I will give you Rest. So the part of being mindful is asking the questions. By name, I encourage you to bring that thing, bring the baggage before him. Make it, discern it, look for it, and offer it to him and say, Lord, have mercy, bring healing and peace. For mindfulness begins in the presence of the Lord, saying, Lord, all that I am, all of it, is before you. Heal, bring peace. And maybe that's the first time, today's the first time you're doing it. And some of you may feel like you're emotionally infantile and unable to really ask these questions. Well, before the Lord and before the Holy Spirit and by his power, which attests and does great things, he can bring it to life. And if you're something you're thankful for, praise God. If you're anxious about it, okay, just bring it. Wanna do this together? Let's do this together. Let me pray for us, and then we will begin. Heavenly Father, I thank you for this supper, for this supper is meant to be a celebration of what you have done and what you are doing, and that you are not done with us, and that your Holy Spirit means to lead us to a deeper place of healthiness and maturity that we might be saved from drifting and neglecting. Lord, this could be a day of renewal for many, and I pray that it would be a day that you would rescue us from neglect and drifting. Lord, that we might come to you by your Holy Spirit and offer you these things, and as you feed us, may your Spirit bring healing and wholeness and freedom, forgiveness, and beauty because the gospel is at work. Help us we pray in Jesus' name, amen.